


Ahora y en la Hora de Nuestra Muerte

by theunwillingheart



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Angst, Catholic Character, Mortality, Other, Prayer, Stream of Consciousness, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 21:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9922625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theunwillingheart/pseuds/theunwillingheart
Summary: Kit looks back on his partnership with Nita as the Song of the Twelve approaches.He is not alone in his thoughts, for now.Spoilers for Books 1 and 2.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my Nana, _E_. I need you to come back and show me what to do with my hands. The summers are so much lonelier without you, and the time on the oven clock is always wrong.
> 
> Disclaimer: Young Wizards belongs to Diane Duane, not me. Which is a good thing, because she is infinitely better at this than I am.

In his early readings of the manual, he had found no mention of wizard partnerships.  What he _had_ found were a lot of spells with multiple speaking parts, diagrams with extra name spaces.  He was a smart kid; he could extrapolate.  So when he first met another wizard, in the woods by the freeway, he had some idea of what was supposed to happen.

Some.  Not all.

He had erected special wards to keep out the BB guns, and the racial slurs, and the endless, boorish laughter.

But she had just stepped right through them without even noticing, and then kept going.

Nita.  Her name was Nita.  She had dark hair, and a black eye, and, _yup_ , she was… definitely taller than him—sheesh, go figure.

“The trees are mad at you,” she had said, hesitantly, as if she had not yet decided whether to believe her own words.

(Of course, he had gone and replied with, “I talked to a rock last week,” and suddenly, yeah, _this_ was a conversation that was happening.)

From then on, Nita had been the girl who would not be kept out—not out of his wards, not out of his spells.

Not out of his thoughts, either, when they took to sharing ideas without speaking out loud, as is common in the early partnerships.

(“The easy bonds of young wizards,” Tom had said wistfully, looking at them, and Carl had just shaken his head, smiling.)

_What can I do; how can this be happening?  I never wanted this; I never willed it—my life was just beginning!  Take it away, please take it away—_

The trial in Manhattan had tested them, but it had also changed them.  When Kit looks back on it now, it feels like a blur—the perytons, the Lotus, the look and feel of an entire dimension turned malicious and cruel.  Sneaking through the streets of the Other Manhattan, stealing the dark _Book_ , making the trade with the Eldest.  And then—the return home, the flip of a coin, reading from the bright _Book_ as the moon ran down.  Just as it began to feel that the power coursing through him would lead him to a place of no return, Nita had taken the _Book_ from his hands and resumed.

_“Will you sound the sea’s depth, or climb the mountain?_

_In air or in water, still I am there;_

_Will the earth cover you?  Will the night hide you?_

_In deep or in darkness, still I am there;_

_Will you kindle the nova, or kill the starlight?_

_In fire or in death cold, still I am there-”_

_Nita_ , Kit had thought, amazed, _the girl who would not be kept out_.  Now speaking for and in the One who was everywhere, unseen.

It all happened in an instant.  The moon went out.  Fred was gone.  And then they were both reading together, reading and crying.  Nita took out her pen, drew the glittering arrow— _never, forever_ became _if and only if_ —

(“You read from it,” Carl had said, full of wonder.  He had taken the _Book_ from them reverently, then touched Nita’s shoulder as if to make sure she was really there.  “How do you feel?”

“Fading,” Nita had said, gazing out into the distance.  “I’m afraid I’ll never be that real again.”)

_Why does it have to be me?  Couldn’t it be someone else, someone braver?  Surely there are others who could do it—but no, no, I promised, has to be me now, and I could never live with myself, could never forgive myself, could never—_

Doesn’t she know, or shouldn’t she, that he would do anything to find himself able to take her place, Powers willing?

(And then maybe _she_ could explain it to _his_ folks, _see how that makes_ you _feel-_ )

_It’s all happening so fast; I can’t keep up with it, can’t process it—maybe that’s for the best.  Maybe it’ll be over before I know it; maybe I’ll barely feel anything, maybe—_

He finds himself thinking back to his _abuela_ , to when she had died.  He had been seven, then, and by that time she had long been too sick to play games or read stories.  But still, she had _been_ _there_ —hardly speaking or moving, but _there_ , continuously turning the beads of her rosary around in her arthritic fingers.  Always there, until she wasn’t anymore.

Her departure had felt so sudden.  But when she had disappeared, there had been no loud implosion, no rush of air to fill the space left behind, and maybe that’s why he had still been able to feel it, weeks later—the void that had remained in the house, in her bedroom, with the soft bed, covered in lilac sheets, printed with fuzzy dandelion heads.

He was a smart kid.  He could extrapolate.  He knew that this would happen to him many times in his life, people he loved getting replaced with empty spaces.

But not in his mind, he had never imagined it happening in his _mind_ —

 _How could I have been so_ stupid _?  Swearing an oath without thinking—I’m such a lousy wizard; this is all my fault!  If only I had done my research; if only I had asked—I want to go back!  I want to go back and do it all again, I—_

“Interesting.”  The emotionless voice approaches from behind him.

Kit forces himself to swim with smooth calm, when all he wants to do is thrash and flee.  “What is?” he asks, and he cannot keep the note of hysteria from his song.

“The Sprat seems to have clamped down on her fear—at least, on the surface,” says the Pale Slayer.  “But you have not.  Odd, when you consider whose blood will soon be in the water.” 

Kit struggles to push the voices and emotions down, to drown them in the sperm whale’s enormous brain.

Cold, black eyes regard him without expression.  “But then, I have heard that they can be rather intense,” muses Ed, “these… _wizard partnerships_.” Kit had not known it was possible for a voice to convey simultaneously so much contempt and longing.  “Perhaps this one is causing you too much distress…?”

Kit pushes too far and is submerged in the weft of his ribs, the massive gate of his teeth.  For a terrible, wonderful moment, he is Jonah, swallowed by the whale.  He looks out at the world through the eyes of something too big to be hurt or changed. Out in the fathomless depths, the sea calls out to him, beckoning…

He is spit back out and emerges, spluttering, into the full strangeness of his being.  When at last he is able to speak again, his voice does not betray him.

“No more distress here, Master Shark,” he says, coolly.  “Though it is true that I wish circumstances were otherwise.”

“Indeed,” says Ed, and his ironic voice leaves no echo.

…

Kit Rodriguez is many things.  He is a wizard, yes, and a human.  At times, he is a sperm whale.  ( _And_ _oh_ , sing his flippers and his flukes, _if only the whale could leave the rest of it behind-_ ) 

But beneath all that, Kit Rodriguez is still a child, with all the desires of a child.  He wants to feel loved and accepted; he wants to be good at his work; he wants to feel safe at night.

He wants his parents, his sisters.  He wants his _abuela_ , who had always prayed for him, even before he was born.

…

Kit lies awake and forces himself to listen.

She doesn’t seem to know that she’s doing it.  Nita may be asleep, but her unconscious mind is still reeling.  The onslaught of distressed thoughts screams through his head, makes his skull pound with pain and nauseous grief.

 _No, no, I don’t want to go, don’t want to leave; don’t take me away.  Mom, Daddy, Dari, Kit,_ _oh_ Kit _, I’m so,_ so _sorry—_

He doesn’t shut her out.  He cannot shut her out.  If this is all they have left, it is all he will take, and he will hold onto it, desperately, until the end.

 _Ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte_.  He whispers the words quietly back across their link.  It does not take the pain away.  It is a plea and a promise.

He falls asleep to the sound of prayer beads clicking softly in the darkness beside him.

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing much to add here, just that Ed is a super interesting and unique character. I don't think I've come across anyone quite like him anywhere else. It was cool to write for him.


End file.
